by Deb Caletti
“MY credit card number?”
“Well, Indigo, come on. There’s no way he’s paying for us to have a car here, and you know, we do get to stay here on the company account.”
“Fine. You’re right.”
“You’ve got plenty of money. Don’t be cheap.” This should bother me maybe, but it doesn’t. It feels like my share. There is this house she’s invited me to. A glimmering pool outside. Melanie socks my arm playfully. We’re hunting for breakfast in the fridge.
“I still can’t believe you got a one-way ticket,” she says.
“Why? Maybe I’ll want to stay. Maybe this is my place too.”
“Well, then the car lease is a good idea. I told him to get it for the summer, is that okay? Since that’s how long we’ll have the house? I thought maybe you could drive me down to school. If you decide you want to stay, you can go from there.”
“Perfect,” I say. And it feels closer to perfect today. The house is bright, and you can feel the ocean urging possibilities. I’d just forbid myself to think about Trevor and home. I’d use some mental flyswatter, smack away any slightly buzzing thought.
“There’s nothing to eat around here,” Melanie says. And she’s right. Well, there’s food, but there’s nothing to eat. This is food for decoration. There’s a package of pine nuts that cost more than a good breakfast at Carrera’s, and a wedge of cheese that was more expensive than three packages of the pine nuts. There’s a cellophane bag of dried figs in a designer bow, and a glass container of anchovies. It’s impressive, but lacks the general requirements of actual food—nourishment, say. “We can stop somewhere on the way to the beach,” Melanie says.
A few moments later, the doorbell chimes and two car lease guys poke their heads in our front door. Sitting outside is a red Porsche with the top down. I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?” I say.
Melanie gives me a big smile. “They’re going to need your card and your license. Dad’s taken care of the rest.”
I fill out forms in triplicate, no doubt giving the Porsche company my firstborn child if I scratch the car. Melanie is dangling the keys on the end of her finger. “No way,” I say. “If I just paid to use this thing, you’re Skipper and I’m Barbie.”
The car is brand new. This all feels pretend. Melanie gets in and so do I, and I try to figure out how to get the parking brake off. I hunt around down by my legs and feel up the dashboard, like a seventh-grade boy on his second date. “I just felt up the dashboard,” I say to Melanie, and we break up into the nervous, hysterical giggles of people doing something they sense they shouldn’t. I finally spring something loose, and the car starts to roll backward.
“Indigo!” Melanie shrieks.
“Would you relax, for God’s sake.”
“The landscaping!”
“It’s fine! These deserty plants are sturdy! This is the land of the sturdy plants.” I give the accelerator a little tap and it roars, a big VROOM! like a cartoon car. It always cracks me up when sounds actually sound like the word used to describe them. A cat, for example, never says “meow.” But occasionally a dog will really say “arf” or “woof” and this car actually says “vroom.” Things are looking up. Maybe last night was mere homesickness, over now. Trevor would love this car, but I’m not thinking about Trevor.
I hear the click of Melanie’s seat belt. We sort of lurch forward and back, and then forward again as I figure out the gears. There’s a bit of a reeech! and we leave behind a skid of black and we are off.
“Oh my God,” Melanie says. “Oh my God.” Melanie’s hands grip her seat.
“You are so overdramatic sometimes. Tell me how to get out of here.”
Melanie just gapes, her mouth a black open half circle, like some hole on a miniature golf course. She points. I’m starting to like this a little. It’s way better, let me tell you, than driving one of these things around the living room floor with Barbie and G.I. Joe. You can feel this car’s power right under your hands, and in the way the seat curves around your butt. It’s there, ready to do your command. This thrum of energy…You can feel the possibility of speed. I bet it can go fast.
“Holy fuck, Indigo, SLOW DOWN!”
“Take a laxative, Mel. God. I was just seeing.”
“There’s a speed trap here. Lots of people have lost their lives here. What’s that guy with the movie-star hair? Jimmy Dean.”
“That’s a sausage.”
“Jim. James, okay? And what’s that other one. The guy, the rock guy. Jim Morrison. Right here.”
“You only have to worry if your name is Jim,” I say.
“All kinds of Hollywood people, Indigo. My point is, the road’s dangerous. You always see those wreaths and things here.”
I know she’s lying. Melanie’s mouth always gets obvious sewn-up stitches in the corners when she lies. Her mouth looks like any hem my mom tries to sew without using the Sewing in a Tube. “Liar,” I say. I point at her.
“I am not. Keep your hands on the wheel!”
“Mel, we’re going to the beach, right? And the beach is supposed to be fun and relaxing. Anyway, where is ‘the beach’? There’s beach all over the place.”
“Yeah, but nobody goes here. Just keep going, and you’ll see it off to the left.”
Melanie is right. There it is, and my stomach gives some kind of lurch of dread. No, more like a LURCH OF DREAD. I don’t know what I was picturing—maybe Dad’s beach, where we could rent some snorkeling gear, and swim in the waves and make fun of old guys in Speedos. This is a whole different game; I can tell before I even make my twentieth circle of the parking lot to find a place for my car. My car, by the way, isn’t so special here. I see several of them, in various colors, most of them red, though, just like mine. A red Porsche here is like a black suitcase at the airport. Music blares from a couple of canopy tents on the beach. Perfect bodies play volleyball, reach for that serve. Only a few people are actually in the water—most are propped on half chairs or stretched on mats or towels. There are no little kids, no old people. Only perfect bodies and more perfect bodies holding plastic cups and laughing and jostling each other so boobs jiggle and liquid spills from cups.
Melanie is twisting and adjusting various triangles of her bikini, which is suddenly revealed, her shorts and top having been whipped off with record speed and shoved down onto the floor of the car. I realize that my tank suit is Quaker and nunlike for this place. My insides creep, attempting to make a retreat that I’m unable to make. I’m not a prude, but this is NOT my place—everyone here is posed and styled and has put a great deal of thought into what they’re wearing. Here, my slightly wobbly ass is weird and out of place. It wants to go home, where it’s normal and even appreciated.
I start wondering when we can leave before I’m even out of the car. I want to protect the self-esteem of my imperfect body, and so I keep my shorts on. Melanie is striding over to a group of people, oblivious to the fact that the sand, sinking over the edges of my flip-flops, is searing hot.
“Desiree? Is that you?” she squeals.
“Melanie?” A girl with waist-length brown hair hugs Melanie, and looks at my shorts. “Aren’t you hot?” she asks.
“I have an unsightly rash,” I say.
Melanie gives me the God, Indigo! eyes. “This is Indigo,” Melanie says. “And Desiree. We knew each other from last summer.”
“And Glenn,” Desiree says. No one is named Glenn anymore, but Glenn doesn’t know that. He comes alive at the sound of his own name, same as Freud when he hears the can opener. He lifts his head and strides our way, ditching the guy he’s talking to in order to join us.
“Your dad has the record company,” he says to Melanie. He has brown, shaggy hair, a tattoo of a jet on one arm.
“Yeah,” Melanie says, even though it isn’t true. Her mouth doesn’t have the little lines, though.
“Why are you wearing your shorts?” Glenn asks me. Obviously people here are entitled to rudeness.
“Why do yo
u have an airplane on your shoulder?” I ask.
Glenn pats his own arm. “Oooh, that’s my baby. I can’t bear to be away from her for one minute. So I put her picture here.”
“That’s your plane?”
“Fuck yeah, it is. My Learjet 60.”
“It’s your dad’s, Glenn,” Desiree says.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “It’s mine. Is your car yours?”
“It is mine,” Desiree says.
“Well, it’s mine,” Glenn says.
Mine, mine, mine. I’m getting a headache already.
“Great to meet you, but we’ve got to head out,” I say.
“Real funny, Indigo,” Melanie says. “Let’s get something to drink.”
“We’ve got beer over there,” Glenn says. He points to one of the tents, where there are coolers and tables of food. “Cold beer makes me hot,” he says. He sticks his tongue in Desiree’s ear, and she swats him.
“We’ll be right back,” Melanie says. We head for the tent. I feel like she’s George in Of Mice and Men, while I’m the retarded Lennie, following along. “That Desiree is such a bitch,” she says. “But, God, did you see Glenn? I’ve had a crush on him for three summers.”
“Glenn?” I look at him. I try to see what the big deal is. Trevor appears in my mind. I try to force the thought away, but it insists. My heart squeezes, lurches with ache. No way does Glenn have Trevor’s sweet eyes or smile or arm muscles that could lift you right up and spin you around. I flash on a Trevor memory, the time we were at Pine Lake, looking at the trees; when the light made you sense that promises could be held in your hands. Why do you feel like your heart could break when the hills turn pink and the trees turn yellow? Trevor asked. Why do you feel every joy and sorrow and goodness and beauty and past and present and every perfect thing? I banish the thought. I don’t want to think of Trevor right now, at least the good parts of Trevor. I can’t move into a new, bigger life, dragging my old furniture.
“Why do you say ‘Glenn’ like there’s a question?” Melanie asks.
“He’s got a plane tattoo on his arm.” Leroy’s tattoos are ART. This is advertising copy.
“He’s got a plane.”
“So you’ve got a crush on his plane.”
“His father is a big shot at Universal.”
“Do you think his father’s hot too? I don’t get your point.”
Melanie blows exasperated air out her nose. She rummages around on the table of food for something to eat, but this looks like her dad’s fridge, part two. Tortilla chips that are different colors. Olives, goat cheese. Various bottles of sauce but nothing to put it on. Melanie sticks her hand in a bag of chips and crunches, and then I do my Lennie routine and follow her to the volleyball game in progress. She seems to know these people too, and Glenn is playing, so she joins in and jumps around and squeals and holds her hands in that clasped-together way that means she’s ready for the ball to come to her. Anytime it does, Glenn shoves his way in front of her and attacks it, like a pig after a corncob.
It is my general policy not to play sports in public, as it is against Section Five, Paragraph Three, in the humiliation clause of my personal contract. I once played a game of softball at a school picnic, and I can still hear the laughter. And hey, any nonathlete is doing a public service, because an athlete craves an audience like a guy with new sunglasses craves a mirror.
So I watch the volleyball game until I can’t stand it anymore. Okay, I saw the perfect bodies, let’s move on to something more interesting. Great spike, whoopee. A spike like that could change the world. My life was forever changed by witnessing it.
“Mel!” I shout. “We’re gonna be late!” Okay, true, we have no plans, but this seems better than shouting that I am officially bored out of my skull. Melanie either doesn’t hear me or pretends not to. I cup my hand around my mouth and try again, and she gives me the look a Doberman behind a chain-link fence gives the mailman. She obviously is having a great old time with Glenn, who acts like one of those asshole guys who has big-titted women reclining on the mud flaps of their trucks. You wonder how another woman could raise a man like that. His mother should be ashamed.
I survey my options. Well, I have the car key in my pocket. I could just leave. If I’m going to try to like this new place, I’d better get to know it better, find a beach that isn’t your worst mall nightmare, only with everyone basically naked. Not everyone around here is like this, I’m sure. So I could just sneak away while Mel’s vision is blocked by the bulk of Glenn’s body in front of her. She could get a ride home from Glenn himself, something she might even thank me for. Or I could sit here and wait until…nah.
Then again, driving off without her might make Mel slightly pissed, and given the fact that Mel is currently my only friend here and that she is providing the roof over my head, making Mel pissed is probably not in my best interests.
I can feel my skin ripple with heat and sunburn and skin cancer. I’m going to go through a lot of sun protection factor forty-five while I’m here, I realize. Maybe it’s because I’m starving, but I’m getting that edgy feeling that is just this side of enraged, and I want out of here. I look around for ideas, and as I whip my head back toward the volleyball game, I feel a tiny little spin, brought on only by sudden movement and lack of food, but it makes me remember fainting in Carrera’s, and, yes, what a brilliant idea.
Faking a faint is a little trickier than I thought. Should I keel over like a fence post, or crumple like a delicate woman in an old movie? I stand in a very obvious location, right at the sidelines of the volleyball “court,” at the point where the net post is stuck into the sand. I make what I hope is a fainting sound, some sort of combo of Ah! and Oh! and give my best crumple.
At first it seems no one notices. Shit. Should I stand up and do it again? Glenn yells, “Our serve!” and there is the splat sound of a ball landing against waiting palms. I consider peeking or giving some sort of groan, but it turns out to be unnecessary.
“Oh, God!” some girl screams. “She passed out!”
“Too much fucking beer,” some guy says.
“Indigo? Indigo! Are you all right?” Melanie.
“Maybe we better call 911,” a girl says.
This, I do not want. I pop open my eyes at the very moment someone pours their water bottle over my head. Peachy.
“Heat stroke.” A guy with brown hair streaked blond crouches beside me. His breath smells like corn chips. He holds an empty water bottle. “I was a lifeguard. Saw it all the time. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what happened,” I say.
“Too much fucking beer,” the other guy says again.
“Maybe you’d better get out of the sun for a while,” the former lifeguard says.
“We’ll do that,” Melanie says. Now things are rolling. I sit up. My hair is drenched, and my bathing suit and shorts, too. I could have done without the bottle of water dumped over my head, but oh well. Now that the shock is over, it’s really quite refreshing.
“God, that freaked me out,” a girl in a white bikini says. “I need a beer.”
“Just remember it was our serve,” Glenn says.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Melanie says.
“I’m feeling much better now,” I say. “A hundred percent.”
“Let’s get something to eat,” Melanie says. “If you’re positive you don’t need a doctor or something. We could call Dad…”
“A cheeseburger would help more than any doctor. And a shake. Low blood sugar…”
Melanie and I finally eat real food, and when she sees I’m not dying, she suggests we go shopping. At least stores are air-conditioned, she says.
I feel like it’s my secret duty to make it up to her, so I park the car and we walk to a street of stores. These, too, are different from home. There is no True Value here, with the owner’s stuffed dog out front. These are all small, expensive shops, you can tell, with names writt
en on awnings. The first place is quiet, and the racks along the walls have maybe eight or ten things hanging on them. The two tables in front have maybe four or five items of clothing laid out.
“Are they going out of business?” I joke. “There’s nothing here.” I think I’m pretty funny, but Melanie’s jaw clenches.
“Indigo, can we just look around nicely?” she says.
The woman behind the counter—now this is getting weird. She has blond hair in an upsweep, obvious cheekbones, and an air-conditioned demeanor. I swear to God, she looks just like the woman at the makeup counter, and just like the flight attendant in first class. I squinch at her in a Hey, do we know each other look, but she only lowers her eyebrows disapprovingly.
Melanie scrapes the hangers of the three skirts and two blouses and one shirt against the rack. “This is cute,” she says. She holds up the T-shirt. I conduct the first order of business required after the uttering of the words “This is cute.” I flip over the price tag. I’ve learned this from Mom, or perhaps it’s an action that came down the genetic line, same as that tongue curling trick that we can all do but Trevor can’t.
“Seventy-five dollars!” I say.
“Indigo, shhh, for God’s sake.” Melanie sneak-peeks at the blond woman.
“No, you’re kidding me, right? That’s seventy-five dollars for a T-shirt. It looks like any T-shirt. It looks like any and all T-shirts.”
“It’s not any and all. It’s a really nice T-shirt. A very good quality T-shirt,” Melanie says.
I rub the fabric between my fingers, prompting the blond woman to say too loudly, “Is there something I can help you with?”
“We’re just looking,” Melanie says.
Now, the blond chick and I and Melanie all know that “We’re just looking” means Melanie’s supposed to put the hanger back on the rack and that I am supposed to remove my pinching, soiled fingers from the fine fabric. The sense that I’d better do this is edging through my nervous system, but reaches some stop sign in my brain that makes me remember that I’ve got two and a half million dollars and can buy every item of clothing in this sparse, icy, over-air-conditioned store from this over-air-conditioned woman.